Classics in the History of Psychology

The Principles of PsychologyWilliam James (1890)

When we look at living creatures from an outward point of view, one of
the first things that strike us is that they are bundles of habits. In
wild animals, the usual round of daily behavior seems a necessity implanted
at birth; in animals domesticated, and especially in man, it seems, to
a great extent, to be the result of education. The habits to which there
is an innate tendency are called instincts; some of those due to education
would by most persons be called acts of reason. It thus appears that habit
covers a very large part of life, and that one engaged in studying the
objective manifestations of mind is bound at the very outset to define
clearly just what its limits are.

The moment one tries to define what habit is, one is led to the fundamental
properties of matter. The laws of Nature are nothing but the immutable
habits which the different elementary sorts of matter follow in their actions
and reactions upon each other. In the organic world, however, the habits
are more variable than this. Even instincts vary from one individual to
another of a kind; and are modified in the same individual, as we shall
later see, to suit the exigencies of the case. The habits of an elementary
particle of matter cannot change (on the principles of the atomistic philosophy),
because the particle is itself an unchangeable thing; but those of a compound
mass of matter can change, because they are in the last instance due to
the structure of the compound, and either outward forces or inward tensions
can, from one hour to another, turn that structure into something different
from what it was. That is, they can do so if the body be plastic enough
to maintain [p.105] its integrity, and be not disrupted when its structure
yields. The change of structure here spoken of need not involve the outward
shape; it may be invisible and molecular, as when a bar of iron becomes
magnetic or crystalline through the action of certain outward causes, or
India-rubber becomes friable, or plaster 'sets.' All these changes are
rather slow; the material in question opposes a certain resistance to the
modifying cause, which it takes time to overcome, but the gradual yielding
whereof often saves the material from being disintegrated altogether. When
the structure has yielded, the same inertia becomes a condition of its
comparative permanence in the new form, and of the new habits the body
then manifests. Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word,
means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence,
but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase
of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new
set of habits. Organic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed
with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity of this sort; so that we
may without hesitation lay down as our first proposition the following,
that the phenomena of habit in living beings are due to the plasticity
[2] of the organic materials of which their bodies
are composed.

But the philosophy of habit is thus, in the first instance, a chapter
in physics rather than in physiology or psychology. That it is at bottom
a physical principle is admitted by all good recent writers on the subject.
They call attention to analogues of acquired habits exhibited by dead matter.
Thus, M. Léon Dumont, whose essay on habit is perhaps the most philosophical
account yet published, writes:

"Every one knows how a garment, after having been worn a certain time,
clings to the shape of the body better than when it was new; there has
been a change in the tissue, and this change is a new habit of cohesion.
A lock works better after being used some time; at the outset more force
was required to overcome certain roughnesses in the mechanism. The overcoming
of their resistance is a phenomenon of habituation. It costs less trouble
to fold a paper when it has been [p.106] folded already. This saving of
trouble is due to the essential nature of habit, which brings it about
that, to reproduce the effect, a less amount of the outward cause is required.
The sounds of a violin improve by use in the hands of an able artist, because
the fibres of the wood at last contract habits of vibration conformed to
harmonic relations. This is what gives such inestimable value to instruments
that have belonged to great masters. Water, in flowing, hollows out for
itself a channel, which grows broader and deeper; and, after having ceased
to flow, it resumes, when it flows again, the path traced by itself before.
Just so, the impressions of outer objects fashion for themselves in the
nervous system more and more appropriate paths, and these vital phenomena
recur under similar excitements from without, when they have been interrupted
a certain time."[3]

Not in the nervous system alone. A scar anywhere is a locus minoris
resistentioe, more liable to be abraded, inflamed, to suffer pain and
cold, than are the neighboring parts. A sprained ankle, a dislocated arm,
are in danger of being sprained or dislocated again; joints that have once
been attacked by rheumatism or gout, mucous membranes that have been the
seat of catarrh, are with each fresh recurrence more prone to a relapse,
until often the morbid state chronically substitutes itself for the sound
one. And if we ascend to the nervous system, we find how many so-called
functional diseases seem to keep themselves going simply because they happen
to have once begun; and how the forcible cutting short by medicine of a
few attacks is often sufficient to enable the physiological forces to get
possession of the field again, and to bring the organs back to functions
of health. Epilepsies, neuralgias, convulsive affections of various sorts,
insomnias, are so many cases in point. And, to take what are more obviously
habits, the success with which a 'weaning' treatment can often be applied
to the victims of unhealthy indulgence of passion, or of mere complaining
or irascible disposition, shows us how much the morbid manifestations themselves
were due to the mere inertia of the nervous organs, when once launched
on a false career.

Can we now form a notion of what the inward physical changes may be
like, in organs whose habits have thus [p.107] struck into new paths? In
other words, can we say just what mechanical facts the expression 'change
of habit' covers when it is applied to a nervous system? Certainly we cannot
in anything like a minute or definite way. But our usual scientific custom
of interpreting hidden molecular events after the analogy of visible massive
ones enables us to frame easily an abstract and general scheme of processes
which the physical changes in question may be like. And when once
the possibility of some kind of mechanical interpretation is established,
Mechanical Science, in her present mood, will not hesitate to set her brand
of ownership upon the matter, feeling sure that it is only a question of
time when the exact mechanical explanation of the case shall be found out.

If habits are due to the plasticity of materials to outward agents,
we can immediately see to what outward influences, if to any, the brain-matter
is plastic. Not to mechanical pressures, not to thermal changes, not to
any of the forces to which all the other organs of our body are exposed;
for nature has carefully shut up our brain and spinal cord in bony boxes
where no influences of this sort can get at them. She has floated them
in fluid so that only the severest shocks can give them a concussion, and
blanketed and wrapped them about in an altogether exceptional way. The
only impressions that can be made upon them are through the blood, on the
one hand, and through the sensory nerve-roots, on the other; and it is
to the infinitely attenuated currents that pour in through these latter
channels that the hemispherical cortex shows itself to be so peculiarly
susceptible. The currents, once in, must find a way out. In getting out
they leave their traces in the paths which they take. The only thing they
can do, in short, is to deepen old paths or to make new ones; and
the whole plasticity of the brain sums itself up in two words when we call
it an organ in which currents pouring in from the sense-organs make with
extreme facility paths which do not easily disappear. For, of course, a
simple habit, like every other nervous event - the habit of snuffling,
for example, or of putting one's hands into one's pockets, or of biting
one's nails - is, mechanically, nothing but a reflex [p.108] discharge;
and its anatomical substratum must be a path in the system. The most complex
habits, as we shall presently see more fully, are, from the same point
of view, nothing but concatenated discharges in the nerve-centres,
due to the presence there of systems of reflex paths, so organized as to
wake each other up successively - the impression produced by one muscular
contraction serving as a stimulus to provoke the next, until a final impression
inhibits the process and closes the chain. The only difficult mechanical
problem is to explain the formulation de novo of a simple reflex
or path in a pre-existing nervous system. Here, as in so many other cases,
it is only the premier pas qui coûte. For the entire nervous
system is nothing but a system of paths between a sensory terminus
a quo and a muscular, glandular, or other terminus ad quem.
A path once traversed by a nerve-current might be expected to follow the
law of most of the paths we know, and to be scooped out and made more permeable
than before;[4] and this ought to be repeated with each
new passage of the current. Whatever obstructions may have kept it at first
from being a path should then, little by little, and more and more, be
swept out of the way, until at last it might become a natural drainage-channel.
This is what happens where either solids or liquids pass over a path; there
seems no reason why is should not happen where the thing that passes is
a mere wave of rearrangement in matter that does not displace itself, but
merely changes chemically or turns itself round in place, or vibrates across
the line. The most plausible views of the nerve-current make it out to
be the passage of some such wave of rearrangement as this. If only a part
of the matter of the path were to 'rearrange' itself, the neighboring parts
remaining inert, it is easy to see how their inertness might oppose a friction
which it would take many waves of rearrangement to break down and overcome.
If we call the path itself the 'organ,' and the wave of rearrangement the
'function,' then it is obvi- [p.109] ously a case for repeating the celebrated
French formula of 'La fonction fait l'organe.'

So nothing is easier than to imagine how, when a current once has traversed
a path, it should traverse it more readily still a second time. But what
made it ever traverse it the first time?[5] In answering
this question we can only fall back on our general conception of a nervous
system as a mass of matter whose parts, constantly kept in states of different
tension, are as constantly tending to equalize their states. The equalization
between any two points occurs through whatever path may at the moment be
most pervious. But, as a given point of the system may belong, actually
or potentially, to many different paths, and, as the play of nutrition
is subject to accidental changes, blocks may from time to time occur,
and make currents shoot through unwonted lines. Such an unwonted line would
be a new-created path, which if traversed repeatedly, would become the
beginning of a new reflex arc. All this is vague to the last degree, and
amounts to little more than saying that a new path may be formed by the
sort of chances that in nervous material are likely to occur. But,
vague as it is, it is really the last word of our wisdom in the matter.[6]

It must be noticed that the growth of structural modification in living
matter may be more rapid than in any lifeless mass, because the incessant
nutritive renovation of which the living matter is the seat tends often
to corroborate [p.110] and fix the impressed modification, rather than
to counteract it by renewing the original constitution of the tissue that
has been impressed. Thus,we notice after exercising our muscles or our
brain in a new way, that we can do so no longer at that time; but after
a day or two of rest, when we resume the discipline, our increase in skill
not seldom surprises us. I have often noticed this in learning a tune;
and it has led a German author to say that we learn to swim during the
winter and to skate during the summer.

"It is a matter of universal experience that every kind of training
for special aptitudes is both far more effective, and leaves a more permanent
impress, when exerted on the growing organism than when brought
to bear on the adult. The effect of such training is shown in the tendency
of the organ to 'grow to' the mode in which it is habitually exercised;
as is evidenced by the increased size and power of particular sets of muscles,
and the extraordinary flexibility of joints, which are acquired by such
as have been early exercised in gymnastic performances...There is no part
of the organism of man in which the reconstructive activity is so
great, during the whole period of life, as it is in the ganglionic substance
of the brain. This is indicated by the enormous supply of blood which it
receives....It is, moreover, a fact of great significance that the nerve-substance
is specially distinguished by its reparative power. For while injuries
of other tissues (such as the muscular) which are distinguished by the
speciality of their structure and endowments, are repaired by substance
of a lower or less specialized type, those of nerve-substance are repaired
by a complete reproduction of the normal tissue; as is evidenced in the
sensibility of the newly forming skin which is closing over an open wound,
or in the recovery of the sensibility of a piece of 'transplanted' skin,
which has for a time been rendered insensible by the complete interruption
of the continuity of its nerves. The most remarkable example of this reproduction,
however, is afforded by the results of M. Brown-Séquard's[8]
experiments upon the gradual restoration of the functional activity of
the spinal cord after its complete division; which takes place in way that
indicates rather a reproduction of the whole, or the lower part
of the cord and of the nerves proceeding from it, than a mere reunion
of divided surfaces. This reproduction is but a special manifestation
of the reconstructive change which is always taking place in the
nervous system; it being not less obvious to the eye of reason that the
'waste' occasioned by its functional activity must be constantly repaired
by the [p.111] production of new tissue, than it is to the eye of sense
that such reparation supplies an actual loss of substance by disease
or injury.

"Now, in this constant and active reconstruction of the nervous system,
we recognize a most marked conformity to the general plan manifested in
the nutrition of the organism as a whole. For, in the first place, it is
obvious that there is a tendency to the production of a determinate
type of structure; which type is often not merely that of the species,
but some special modification of it which characterized one or both of
the progenitors. But this type is peculiarly liable to modification during
the early period of life; in which the functional activity of the nervous
system (and particularly of the brain) is extraordinarily great, and the
reconstructive process proportionally active. And this modifiability expresses
itself in the formation of the mechanism by which those secondarily
automatic modes of movement come to be established, which, in man,
take the place of those that are congenital in most of the animals
beneath him; and those modes of sense-perception come to be acquired,
which are elsewhere clearly instinctive. For there can be no reasonable
doubt that, in both cases, a nervous mechanism is developed in the
course of this self-education, corresponding with that which the lower
animals inherit from their parents. The plan of that rebuilding
process, which is necessary to maintain the integrity of the organism generally,
and which goes on with peculiar activity in this portion of it, is thus
being incessantly modified; and in this manner all that portion of it which
ministers to the external life of sense and motion that is shared
by man with the animal kingdom at large, becomes at adult age the expression
of the habits which the individual has acquired during the period of growth
and development. Of these habits, some are common to the race generally,
while others are peculiar to the individual; those of the former kind (such
as walking erect) being universally acquired, save where physical inability
prevents; while for the latter a special training is needed, which is usually
the more effective the earlier it is begun - as is remarkably seen in the
case of such feats of dexterity as require a conjoint education of the
perspective and of the motor powers. And when thus developed during the
period of growth, so as to have become a part of the constitution of the
adult, the acquired mechanism is thenceforth maintained in the ordinary
course of the nutritive operations, so as to be ready for use when called
upon, even after long inaction.

"What is so clearly true of the nervous apparatus of animal life can
scarcely be otherwise than true of that which ministers to the automatic
activity of the mind. For, as already shown, the study of psychology has
evolved no more certain result than that there are uniformities of mental
action which are so entirely conformable to those of bodily action as to
indicate their intimate relation to a 'mechanism of thought and feeling,'
acting under the like conditions with that of sense and motion. The psychical
principles of association, indeed, and the physiological principles
of nutrition, simply express - the former in terms of mind, [p.112]
the latter in terms of brain - the universally admitted fact that any sequence
of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate
itself; so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to think,
feel, or do what we have been before accustomed to think,
feel, or do, under like circumstances, without any consciously formed purpose,
or anticipation of results. For there is no reason to regard the cerebrum
as an exception to the general principle that, while each part of the organism
tends to form itself in accordance with the mode in which it is
habitually exercised, this tendency will be especially strong in the nervous
apparatus, in virtue of that incessant regeneration which is the
very condition of its functional activity. It scarcely, indeed, admits
of doubt that every state of ideational consciousness which is either very
strong or is habitually repeated leaves an organic impression
on the cerebrum; in virtue of which that same state may be reproduced at
any future time, in respondence to a suggestion fitted to excite it. .
. . . . The 'strength of early association' is a fact so universally recognized
that the expression of it has become proverbial; and this precisely accords
with the physiological principle that, during the period of growth and
development, the formative activity of the brain will be most amenable
to directing influences. It is in this way that what is early 'learned
by heart' becomes branded in (as it were) upon the cerebrum; so that its
'traces' are never lost, even though the conscious memory of it may have
completely faded out. For, when the organic modification has been once
fixed in the growing brain, it becomes a part of the normal fabric,
and is regularly maintained by nutritive substitution; so that it
may endure to the end of life, like the scar of a wound."

Dr. Carpenter's phrase that our nervous system grows to the modes
in which it has been exercised expresses the philosophy of habit in
a nutshell. We may now trace some of the practical applications of the
principle to human life.

The first result of it is that habit simplifies the movements required
to achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue.

"The beginner at the piano not only moves his finger up and down in
order to depress the key, he moves the whole hand, the forearm and even
the entire body, especially moving its least rigid part, the head, as if
he would press down the key with that organ too. Often a contraction of
the abdominal muscles occurs as well. Principally, however, the impulse
is determined to the motion of the hand and of the single finger. This
is, in the first place, because the movement of the finger is the movement
thought of, and, in the second place, because its movement and that
of the key are the movements we try to perceive, along with the
results of the latter on the ear. The more often the process [p.113] is
repeated, the more easily the movement follows, on account of the increase
in permeability of the nerves engaged.

"But the more easily the movement occurs, the slighter is the stimulus
required to set it up; and the slighter the stimulus is, the more its effect
is confined to the fingers alone.

"Thus, an impulse which originally spread its effects over the whole
body, or at least over many of its movable parts, is gradually determined
to a single definite organ, in which it effects the contraction of a few
limited muscles. In this change the thoughts and perceptions which start
the impulse acquire more and more intimate causal relations with a particular
group of motor nerves.

"To recur to a simile, at least partially apt, imagine the nervous system
to represent a drainage-system, inclining, on the whole, toward certain
muscles, but with the escape thither somewhat clogged. Then streams of
water will, on the whole, tend most to fill the drains that go towards
these muscles and to wash out the escape. In case of a sudden 'flushing,'
however, the whole system of channels will fill itself, and the water overflow
everywhere before it escapes. But a moderate quantity of water invading
the system will flow through the proper escape alone.

"Just so with the piano-player. As soon as his impulse, which has gradually
learned to confine itself to single muscles, grows extreme, it overflows
into larger muscular regions. He usually plays with his fingers, his body
being at rest. But no sooner does he get excited than his whole body becomes
'animated,' and he moves his head and trunk, in particular, as if these
also were organs with which he meant to belabor the keys."[9]

Man in born with a tendency to do more things than he has ready-made
arrangements for in his nerve-centres. Most of the performances of other
animals are automatic. But in him the number of them is so enormous, that
most of them must be the fruit of painful study. If practice did not make
perfect, nor habit economize the expense of nervous and muscular energy,
he would therefore be in a sorry plight. As Dr. Maudsley says: [10]

:If an act became no easier after being done several times, if the careful
direction of consciousness were necessary to its accomplishment on each
occasion, it is evident that the whole activity of a lifetime might be
confined to one or two deeds - that no progress could take place in development.
A man might be occupied all day in dressing and un- [p.114] dressing himself;
the attitude of his body would absorb all his attention and energy; the
washing of his hands or the fastening of a button would be as difficult
to him on each occasion as to the child on its first trial; and he would,
furthermore, be completely exhausted by his exertions. Think of the pains
necessary to teach a child to stand, of the many efforts which it must
make, and of the ease with which it at last stands, unconscious of any
effort. For while secondarily automatic acts are accomplished with comparatively
little weariness - in this regard approaching the organic movements, or
the original reflex movements - the conscious effort of the will soon produces
exhaustion. A spinal cord without . . . memory would simply be an idiotic
spinal cord . . . It is impossible for an individual to realize how much
he owes to its automatic agency until disease has impaired its functions."

The next result is that habit diminishes the conscious attention
with which our acts are performed.

One may state this abstractly thus: If an act require for its execution
a chain, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc., of successive nervous events,
then in the first performances of the action the conscious will must choose
each of these events from a number of wrong alternatives that tend to present
themselves; but habit soon brings it about that each event calls up its
own appropriate successor without any alternative offering itself, and
without any reference to the conscious will, until at last the whole chain,
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, rattles itself off as soon as A occurs,
just as if A and the rest of the chain were fused into a continuous
stream. When we are learning to walk, to ride, to swim, skate, fence, write,
play, or sing, we interrupt ourselves at every step by unnecessary movements
and false notes. When we are proficients, on the contrary, the results
not only follow with the very minimum of muscular action requisite to bring
them forth, they also follow from a single instantaneous 'cue.' The marksman
sees the bird, and, before he knows it, he has aimed and shot. A gleam
in his adversary's eye, a momentary pressure from his rapier, and the fencer
finds that he has instantly made the right parry and return. A glance at
the musical hieroglyphics, and the pianist's fingers have ripped through
a cataract of notes. And not only is it the right thing at the right time
that we thus involuntarily do, but the wrong thing also, if it be an habitual
[p.115] thing. Who is there that has never wound up his watch on taking
off his waistcoat in the daytime, or taken his latchkey out on arriving
at the door-step of a friend? Very absent-minded persons in going to their
bedroom to dress for dinner have been known to take off one garment after
another and finally to get into bed, merely because that was the habitual
issue of the first few movements when performed at a later hour. The writer
well remembers how, on revisiting Paris after ten years' absence, and,
finding himself in the street in which for one winter he had attended school,
he lost himself in a brown study, from which he was awakened by finding
himself upon the stairs which led to the apartment in a house many streets
away in which he had lived during that earlier time, and to which his steps
from the school had then habitually led. We all of us have a definite routine
manner of performing certain daily offices connected with the toilet, with
the opening and shutting of familiar cupboards, and the like. Our lower
centres know the order of these movements, and show their knowledge by
their 'surprise' if the objects are altered so as to oblige the movement
to be made in a different way. But our higher thought-centres know hardly
anything about the matter. Few men can tell off-hand which sock, shoe,
or trousers-leg they put on first. They must first mentally rehearse the
act; and even that is often insufficient - the act must be performed.
So of the questions, Which valve of my double door opens first? Which way
does my door swing? etc. I cannot tell the answer; yet my
hand never makes a mistake. No one can describe the order
in which he brushes his hair or teeth; yet it is likely that the order
is a pretty fixed one in all of us.

These results may be expressed as follows:

In action grown habitual, what instigates each new muscular contraction
to take place in its appointed order is not a thought or a perception,
but the sensation occasioned by the muscular contraction just finished.
A strictly voluntary act has to be guided by idea, perception, and volition,
throughout its whole course. In an habitual action, mere sensation is a
sufficient guide, and the upper [p.116] regions of brain and mind are set
comparatively free. A diagram will make the matter clear:
Let A, B, C, D, E, F, G represent an habitual chain of muscular
contractions, and let a, b, c, d, e, f stand for the respective
sensations which these contractions excite in us when they are successively
performed. Such sensations will usually be of the muscles, skin, or joints
of the parts moved, but they may also be effects of the movement upon the
eye or the ear. Through them, and through them alone, we are made aware
whether the contraction has or has not occurred. When the series, A,
B, C, D, E, F, G, is being learned, each of these sensations becomes
the object of a separate perception by the mind. By it we test each movement,
to see if it be right before advancing to the next. We hesitate, compare,
choose, revoke, reject, etc., by intellectual means; and the order by which
the next movement is discharged is an express order from the ideational
centres after this deliberation has been gone through.

In habitual action, on the contrary, the only impulse which the centres
of idea or perception need send down is the initial impulse, the command
to start. This is represented in the diagram by V; it may
be a thought of the first movement or of the last result, or a mere perception
of some of the habitual conditions of the chain, the presence, e.g., of
the keyboard near the hand. In the present case, no sooner has the conscious
thought or volition instigated movement A, than A, through
the sensation a of its own occurrence, awakens B reflexly;
B then excites C through b, and so on till the chain
is ended when the intellect generally takes cognizance of the final result.
The process, in fact, resembles the passage of a wave of 'peristaltic'
motion [p.117] down the bowels. The intellectual perception at the end
is indicated in the diagram by the effect of G being represented,
at G', in the ideational centres above the merely sensational
line. The sensational impressions, a, b, c, d, e, f, are all supposed
to have their seat below the ideational lines. That our ideational centres,
if involved at all by a, b, c, d, e, f, are involved in a minimal
degree, is shown by the fact that the attention may be wholly absorbed
elsewhere. We may say our prayers, or repeat the alphabet, with our attention
far away.

"A musical performer will play a piece which has become familiar by
repetition while carrying on an animated conversation, or while continuously
engrossed by some train of deeply interesting thought; the accustomed sequence
of movements being directly prompted by the sight of the notes,
or by the remembered succession of the sounds (if the piece is played
from memory), aided in both cases by the guiding sensations derived from
the muscles themselves. But, further, a higher degree of the same 'training'
(acting on an organism specially fitted to profit by it) enables an accomplished
pianist to play a difficult piece of music at sight; the movements of the
hands and fingers following so immediately upon the sight of the notes
that it seems impossible to believe that any but the very shortest and
most direct track can be the channel of the nervous communication through
which they are called forth. The following curious example of the same
class of acquired aptitudes, which differ from instincts only in
being prompted to action by the will, is furnished by Robert Houdin:

"'With a view of cultivating the rapidity of visual and tactile perception,
and the precision of respondent movements, which are necessary for the
success in every kind of prestidigitation, Houdin early practised the art
of juggling with balls in the air; and having, after a month's practice,
become thorough master of the art of keeping up four balls at once,
he placed a book before him, and, while the balls were in the air, accustomed
himself to read without hesitation. 'This,' he says, 'will probably seem
to my readers very extraordinary; but I shall surprise them still more
when I say that I have just amused myself with repeating this curious experiment.
Though thirty years have elapsed since the time I was writing, and though
I have scarcely once touched the balls during that period, I can still
manage to read with ease while keeping three balls up.'" (Autobiography,
p. 26.)[11]

We have called a, b, c, d, e, f, the antecedents of the successive
muscular attractions, by the name of sensations. Some authors seem to deny
that they are even this. If not [p.118] even this, they can only be centripetal
nerve-currents, not sufficient to arouse feeling, but sufficient to arouse
motor response.[12] It may be at once admitted that
they are not distinct volitions. The will, if any will be present,
limits itself to a permission that they exert their motor effects,
Dr. Carpenter writes:

"There may still be metaphysicians who maintain that actions which were
originally prompted by the will with a distinct intention, and which are
still entirely under its control, can never cease to be volitional; and
that either an infinitesimally small amount of will is required to sustain
them when they have been once set going, or that the will is in a sort
of pendulum-like oscillation between the two actions - the maintenance
of the train of thought, and the maintenance of the train of movement.
But if only an infinitesimally small amount of will is necessary to sustain
them, is not this tantamount to saying that they go on by a force of their
own? And does not the experience of the perfect continuity of our
train of thought during the performance of movements that have become habitual,
entirely negative the hypothesis of oscillation? Besides, if such an oscillation
existed, there must be intervals in which each action goes on of
itself; so that its essentially automatic character is virtually admitted.
The physiological explanation, that the mechanism of locomotion, as of
other habitual movements, growsto the mode in which it is
early exercised, and that it then works automatically under the general
control and direction of the will, can scarcely be put down by any assumption
of an hypothetical necessity, which rests only on the basis of ignorance
of one side of our composite nature."[13]

But if not distinct acts of will, these immediate antecedents of each
movement of the chain are at any rate accompanied by consciousness of some
kind. They are sensations to which we are usually inattentive,
but which immediately call out attention if they go wrong. Schneider's
account of these sensations deserves to be quoted. In the act of walking,
he says, even when our attention is entirely off,

"we are continuously aware of certain muscular feelings; and we have,
moreover, a feeling of certain impulses to keep our equilibrium and to
set down one leg after another. It is doubtful whether we could preserve
equilibrium if no sensation of our body's attitude were there, [p.119]
and doubtful whether we should advance our leg if we had no sensation of
its movements as executed, and not even a minimal feeling of impulse to
set it down. Knitting appears altogether mechanical, and the knitter keeps
up her knitting even while she reads or is engaged in lively talk. But
if we ask her how this be possible, she will hardly reply that the knitting
goes on of itself. She will rather say that she has a feeling of it, that
she feels in her hands that she knits and how she must knit, and that therefore
the movements of knitting are called forth and regulated by the sensations
associated therewithal, even when the attention is called away.

"So of every one who practises, apparently automatically, a long-familiar
handicraft. The smith turning his tongs as he smites the iron, the carpenter
wielding his plane, the lace-maker with her bobbin, the weaver at his loom,
all will answer the same question in the same way by saying that they have
a feeling of the proper management of the implement in their hands.

"In these cases, the feelings which are conditions of the appropriate
acts are very faint. But none the less are they necessary. Imagine your
hands not feeling; your movements could then only be provoked by ideas,
and if your ideas were then diverted away, the movements ought to come
to a standstill, which is a consequence that seldom occurs."[14]

Again:

"An idea makes you take, for example, a violin into your left hand.
But it is not necessary that your idea remain fixed on the contraction
of the muscles of the left hand and fingers in order that the violin may
continue to be held fast and not let fall. The sensations themselves which
the holding of the instrument awakens in the hand, since they are associated
with the motor impulse of grasping, are sufficient to cause this impulse,
which then lasts as long as the feeling itself lasts, or until the impulse
is inhibited by the idea of some antagonistic motion."

And the same may be said of the manner in which the right hand holds
the bow:

"It sometimes happens, in beginning these simultaneous combinations,
that one movement or impulse will cease if the consciousness turn particularly
toward another, because at the outset the guiding sensations must all
be strongly felt. The bow will perhaps slip from the fingers,
because some of the muscles have relaxed. But the slipping is a cause of
new sensations starting up in the hand, so that the attention is in a moment
brought back to the grasping of the bow.

"The following experiment shows this well: When one begins to play on
the violin, to keep him from raising his right elbow in playing [p.120]
a book is placed under his right armpit, which he is ordered to hold fast
by keeping the upper arm tight against his body. The muscular feelings,
and feelings of contact connected with the book, provoke an impulse to
press it tight. But often it happens that the beginner, whose attention
gets absorbed in the production of the notes, lets drop the book. Later,
however, this never happens; the faintest sensations of contact suffice
to awaken the impulse to keep it in its place, and the attention may be
wholly absorbed by the notes and the fingering with the left hand. The
simultaneous combination of movements is thus in the first instance conditioned
by the facility with which in us, alongside of intellectual processes,
processes of inattentive feeling may still go on."[15]

This brings us by a very natural transition to the ethical implications
of the law of habit. They are numerous and momentous. Dr. Carpenter,
from whose 'Mental Physiology' we have quoted, has so prominently enforced
the principle that our organs grow to the way in which they have been exercised,
and dwelt upon its consequences, that his book almost deserves to be called
a work of edification, on this account alone. We need make no apology,
then, for tracing a few of these consequences ourselves:

"Habit a second nature! Habit is ten times nature," the Duke of Wellington
is said to have exclaimed; and the degree to which this is true no one
can probably appreciate as well as one who is a veteran soldier himself.
The daily drill and the years of discipline end by fashioning a man completely
over again, as to most of the possibilities of his conduct.

"There is a story, which is credible enough, though it may not be true,
of a practical joker, who, seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his
dinner, suddenly called out, 'Attention!' whereupon the man instantly brought
his hands down, and lost his mutton and potatoes in the gutter. The drill
had been thorough, and its effects had become embodied in the man's nervous
structure."[16]

Riderless cavalry-horses, at many a battle, have been seen to come together
and go through their customary evolutions at the sound of the bugle-call.
Most trained domestic animals, dogs and oxen, and omnibus- and car-
[p.121] horses, seem to be machines almost pure and simple, undoubtingly,
unhesitatingly doing from minute to minute the duties they have been taught,
and giving no sign that the possibility of an alternative ever suggests
itself to their mind. Men grown old in prison have asked to be readmitted
after being once set free. In a railroad accident to a travelling menagerie
in the United States some time in 1884, a tiger, whose cage had broken
open, is said to have emerged, but presently crept back again, as if too
much bewildered by his new responsibilities, so that he was without difficulty
secured.

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative
agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and
saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It
alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being
deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and
the deck-hand at sea through the winter; it holds the miner in his darkness,
and nails the countryman to his log-cabin and his lonely farm through all
the months of snow; it protects us from invasion by the natives of the
desert and the frozen zone. It dooms us all to fight out the battle of
life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice, and to make the
best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which we
are fitted, and it is too late to begin again. It keeps different social
strata from mixing. Already at the age of twenty-five you see the professional
mannerism settling down on the young commercial traveller, on the young
doctor, on the young minister, on the young counsellor-at-law. You see
the little lines of cleavage running through the character, the tricks
of thought, the prejudices, the ways of the 'shop,' in a word, from which
the man can by-and-by no more escape than his coat-sleeve can suddenly
fall into a new set of folds. On the whole, it is best he should not escape.
It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the
character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

If the period between twenty and thirty is the critical one in the formation
of intellectual and professional habits, [p.122] the period below twenty
is more important still for the fixing of personal habits, properly
so called, such as vocalization and pronunciation, gesture, motion, and
address. Hardly ever is a language learned after twenty spoken without
a foreign accent; hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of
his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him
by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter
how much money there be in his pocket, can he even learn to dress like
a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as
to the veriest 'swell,' but he simply cannot buy the right things.
An invisible law, as strong as gravitation, keeps him within his orbit,
arrayed this year as he was the last; and how his better-bred acquaintances
contrive to get the things they wear will be for him a mystery till his
dying day.

The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system
our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions,
and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make
automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as
we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to
be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more
of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody
of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for
their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one
in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of
every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to
bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of
express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes
to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained
in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there
be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my readers, let him
begin this very hour to set the matter right.

In Professor Bain's chapter on 'The Moral Habits' there are some admirable
practical remarks laid down. Two great maxims emerge from his treatment.
The first [p.123] is that in the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving
off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong
and decided an initiative as possible. Accumulate all the possible
circumstances which shall re-enforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously
in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible
with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelop
your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning
such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon
as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed
adds to the chances of its not occurring at all.

The second maxim is: Never suffer an exception to occur till the
new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting
fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip
undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. Continuity of
training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly
right. As Professor Bain says:

"The peculiarity of the moral habits, contradistinguishing them from
the intellectual acquisitions, is the presence of two hostile powers, one
to be gradually raised into the ascendant over the other. It is necessary,
above all things, in such a situation, never to lose a battle. Every gain
on the wrong side undoes the effect of many conquests on the right. The
essential precaution, therefore, is so to regulate the two opposing powers
that the one may have a series of uninterrupted successes, until repetition
has fortified it to such a degree as to enable it to cope with the opposition,
under any circumstances. This is the theoretically best career of mental
progress."

The need of securing success at the outset is imperative. Failure
at first is apt to dampen the energy of all future attempts, whereas past
experience of success nerves one to future vigor. Goethe says to a man
who consulted him about an enterprise but mistrusted his own powers: "Ach!
you need only blow on your hands!" And the remark illustrates the effect
on Goethe's spirits of his own habitually successful career. Prof. Baumann,
from whom I borrow the anecdote,[17] says that the collapse
of barbarian [p.124] nations when Europeans come among them is due to their
despair of ever succeeding as the new-comers do in the larger tasks of
life. Old ways are broken and new ones not formed.

The question of 'tapering-off,' in abandoning such habits as drink and
opium-indulgence, comes in here, and is a question about which experts
differ within certain limits, and in regard to what may be best for an
individual case. In the main, however, all expert opinion would agree that
abrupt acquisition of the new habit is the best way, if there be a real
possibility of carrying it out. We must be careful not to give the
will so stiff a task as to insure its defeat at the very outset; but, provided
one can stand it, a sharp period of suffering, and then a free time,
is the best thing to aim at, whether in giving up a habit like that of
opium, or in simply changing one's hours of rising or of work. It is surprising
how soon a desire will die of inanition if it be never fed.

"One must first learn, unmoved, looking neither to the right nor left,
to walk firmly on the straight and narrow path, before one can begin 'to
make one's self over again.' He who every day makes a fresh resolve is
like one who, arriving at the edge of the ditch he is to leap, forever
stops and returns for a fresh run. Without unbroken advance there
is no such thing as accumulation of the ethical forces possible,
and to make this possible, and to exercise us and habituate us in it, is
the sovereign blessing of regular work."[18]

A third maxim may be added to the preceding pair: Seize the very
first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on
every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits
you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming, but in
the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations
communicate the new 'set' to the brain. As the author last quoted remarks:

"The actual presence of the practical opportunity alone furnishes the
fulcrum upon which the lever can rest, by means of which the moral will
may multiply its strength, and raise itself aloft. He who has no solid
ground to press against will never get beyond the stage of empty gesture-making."

[p.125] No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess,
and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one have not
taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character
may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions,
hell is proverbially paved. An this is an obvious consequence of the principles
we have laid down. A 'character,' as J.S. Mill says, 'is a completely fashioned
will'; and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is an aggregate of
tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal
emergencies of life. A tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained
in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions
actually occur, and the brain 'grows' to their use. Every time a resolve
or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is
worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions
and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more
contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist
and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and
emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed. Rousseau, inflaming
all the mothers of France, by his eloquence, to follow Nature and nurse
their babies themselves, while he sends his own children to the foundling
hospital, is the classical example of what I mean. But every one of us
in his measure, whenever, after glowing for an abstractly formulated Good,
he practically ignores some actual case, among the squalid 'other particulars'
of which that same Good lurks disguised, treads straight on Rousseau's
path. All Goods are disguised by the vulgarity of their concomitants, in
this work-a-day world; but woe to him who can only recognize them when
he thinks them in their pure and abstract form! The habit of excessive
novel-reading and theatre-going will produce true monsters in this line.
The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play,
while her coach-man is freezing to death on his seat outside, is the sort
of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale. Even the habit
of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers
themselves nor musically gifted [p.126] enough to take it in a purely intellectual
way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled
with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and
so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The remedy would be, never
to suffer one's self to have an emotion at a concert, without expressing
it afterward in some active way.[19] Let the
expression be the least thing in the world -speaking genially to one's
aunt, or giving up one's seat in a horse-car, if nothing more heroic offers
- but let it not fail to take place.

These latter cases make us aware that it is not simply particular
lines of discharge, but also general forms of discharge, that
seem to be grooved out by habit in the brain. Just as, if we let our emotions
evaporate, they get into a way of evaporating; so there is reason to suppose
that if we often flinch from making an effort, before we know it the effort-making
capacity will be gone; and that, if we suffer the wandering of our attention,
presently it will wander all the time. Attention and effort are, as we
shall see later, but two names for the same psychic fact. To what brain-processes
they correspond we do not know. The strongest reason for believing that
they do depend on brain-processes at all, and are not pure acts of the
spirit, is just this fact, that they seem in some degree subject to the
law of habit, which is a material law. As a final practical maxim, relative
to these habits of the will, we may, then, offer something like this: Keep
the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every
day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary
points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you
would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh,
it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism
of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods.
The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him
a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be
his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has [p.127] daily inured himself
to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial
in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks
around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff
in the blast.

The physiological study of mental conditions is thus the most powerful
ally of hortatory ethics. The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology
tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by
habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young
but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they
would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are
spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest
stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken
Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction
by saying, 'I won't count this time!' Well! he may not count it, and a
kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down
among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering
and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes.
Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of
course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent
drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral,
and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by
so many separate acts and hours of work. Let no youth have any anxiety
about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he
keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave
the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking
up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent ones of his
generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently, between
all the details of his business, the power of judging in all that
class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that
will never pass away. Young people should know this truth in advance. The
ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faint-heartedness
in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together.

Footnotes

[1] This chapter has already appeared in the Popular
Science Monthly for February 1887.

[2] In the sense above explained, which applies to
inner structure as well as to outer form.

[3] Revue Philosophique, I, 324.

[4] Some paths, to be sure, are banked up by bodies
moving through them under too great pressure, and made impervious. These
special cases we disregard.

[5] We cannot say the will, for, though many,
perhaps most, human habits were once voluntary actions, no action, as we
shall see in a later chapter, can be primarily such. While an habitual
action may once have been voluntary, the voluntary action must before that,
at least once, have been impulsive or reflex. It is this very first occurrence
of all that we consider in the text.

[6] Those who desire a more definite formulation may
consult J. Fiske's 'Cosmic Philosophy,' vol. II. pp. 142-146 and Spencer's
'Principles of Biology,' sections 302 and 303, and the part entitled 'Physical
Synthesis' of his 'Principles of Psychology.' Mr. Spencer there tries,
not only to show how new actions may arise in nervous systems and form
new reflex arcs therein, but even how nervous tissue may actually be born
by the passage of new waves of isometric transformation through an originally
indifferent mass. I cannot help thinking that Mr. Spencer's data, under
a great show of precision, conceal vagueness and improbability, and even
self-contradiction.